SUBRA - II

VII 'C', GURUKULAM

The school was very big compared to my old school and was pretty busy too. My father and I were waiting infront of the principal's room and as soon as my principal arrived, I was asked to leave to my class room, right away.

I waved good-bye to my dad and walked alongside a stranger, Pandurangan, the school peon, who was assigned the task of showing me my class room - VII Standard C section.

Pandurangan asked me something - in a strange language. It took me sometime to actually identify the language he was using – it was in fact Tamil, but the slang he used was completely different that I did not understand a word.I made him repeat the question a number of times (as I did not understand what he was talking) that he stopped asking the question and did not expect me to answer too. The rest of our journey, from the office room to my class room, was silent.

My class room too was in the second floor (as my house) and there were a number of class rooms in the same floor. I looked curiously into each class, through the open doors and the windows, as we walked along the long corridor. And finally Pandurangan halted near the entrance of a class room – I stood beside him. He told the teacher something, which again, I did not understand. The teacher looked at me, with a smile and asked me to come in.

I entered the class room and turned back to thank Pandurangan, but he wasn’t there – he had already left. I stood near the entrance without knowing which side to go. The teacher showed me a direction and a few guys made some adjustments and gave me a seat to sit. The whole class was waiting for me to settle down – I sat down, kept my lunch pack below the table and put the rough note book, which I was carrying with me, on the desk and looked up at the teacher – the whole class, including the teacher, was still waiting for me…

‘Comfortable?!’ the teacher asked me as soon as I saw her

‘Yes ma’m’

‘Nice. What’s your name?!’

‘S. Subramanian ma’m’ I got up to answer her…

‘Good. Where do you come from?’

‘Madurai ma’m’

After the routine introduction was over, she asked me to sit down and continued with the lesson…I tried to concentrate on what she was teaching – All I could think of, at that moment, was this - She was sweet, Motherly – I felt instantly comfortable with the way she treated the class!!

As soon as the class was over – the whole class’ attention was on me – or so did I think. I looked around and a number of guys were curiously looking at me. I was a little intimidated and sat there without uttering a word....